The restoration is on the oldest tool I have worked on so far for YouTube. This is a food chopper or hasher patented by L.S. Starrett (of Starrett tool fame) in 1865. It was one of his first patented inventions. You can see the patent here: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4...

At the time of production, this was used mainly to dice meat in to smaller pieces at a much faster pace than doing it by hand. The rich or businesses would find this affordable as it sold for $10 USD in 1869, which is equivalent to ~$2000USD in 2020.

I found this tool about two years ago and wanted it for my personal collection. Since this piece was not a commission, I was able to do whatever I liked with it during the restoration process. With that in mind, I purposely did not remake any wooden pieces as they had a very attractive pattern on them from years of use. With that decision made, it would look odd to remake the damaged bucket as well, so that was just repaired and left as found.

The parts were dunked in Evapo-Rust to reveal what colour and where the original paint was. The only painted part seemed to be the bucket base. The bucket and its base both showed some bright blue paint on the hidden seem where they meet. I am not sure why this colour was there or if it even was paint.

The main castings were all cleaned and had their bores enlarged to accept bronze bushings. There was just too much play all over the machine to make sure it functioned properly, so it had to be done.

The restoration decisions on this tool were very hard to make as I wanted to respect the age and inventor while also maintaining a specific look. Hopefully I achieved a nice balance of those two.

There were MANY different variations of this tool in images online probably due to many production changes over time as the production shifted from Starrett himself to the Athol Machine Co. over time. If someone ever makes a "type study" for this tool, I will be greatly appreciative.

I would like to thank Evapo-Rust for sponsoring this video.

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